The border is tighter than under Bush, but it still isn't an effective deterrent, nor is the increased security in any way permanent. I'll be satisfied when 99.9% of illegal aliens who reach the border look at it, realize the futility of trying to get across, and then turn around and go home to apply for the visa lottery.
A one time investment to build a barrier, money for maintenance, and money for troops. Expensive, yes, but cheaper than the costs of illegal immigration and the various forms of trafficking.
And in addition to the costs to Americans, let's not forget the Mexican lives that will be saved when the drug wars are greatly reduced and when illegal aliens stop dying in the desert as they try to cross.
And there's the benefit that with a secure permanent border in place we can finally have an amnesty so many people will be able to come out of the shadows.
You misunderstand. If the government is hiring the private company, then the government is still calling the shots and controlling the money, and it is still big government. When conservatives seek smaller government, they mean they want government controlling less of our personal lives, less of our money, and less of our public lives.
If they want to fight "sex, drug, organ, or baby traffickers" they should be pushing the government to make the border secure. The problem seems to be that if we secure the border against "sex, drug, organ, or baby traffickers" it will have a side-effect of severely limiting illegal immigration. That have a negative impact on profits for many of the 1% who would have to start paying reasonable wages and following worker protection laws, and it would be bad for Democratic electoral politics.
It is indeed hard to write laws. But one of the goals of writing them should be to make them concise. A short law with a little ambiguity is bad, but so is a law that is so verbose that it requires two lawyers to figure out what you're allowed to do. And even then you're not sure because every additional clause meant to clarify is also an additional opportunity for new ambiguity to creep in. Each pair of clauses is a new opportunity for inconsistency that leads to more ambiguity.
Whether you make the laws concise or verbose, ambiguity is a problem. But with concise laws at least there is some possibility of citizen oversight. An interested citizen can read a 5 page law. But on interested citizen can read the federal budget that gets passed each year. Even the legislators who vote on it don't read the whole thing.
I have long thought that the best reform we could make to the American government is to require one of the sponsors of a bill to read the entire thing from the podium before it is voted on - and only those legislators who sit through the whole reading would be permitted to vote. That would shorten bills tremendously and lead to greater accountability as no legislator could deny knowledge of an obscure clause in a bill they voted for (at least not without looking like they're neglecting their duty to pay attention during the reading). The sponsor in particular, having read the bill aloud, would be accountable for its contents.
Another nice touch would be to give sponsors of a bill veto power over any amendment added to the bill.
1) In such a society I suppose you might end up with married men having too much time on their hands. Anyway, such societies are extremely rare because men tend to die younger (through violence) and because men are less willing to put up with such an arrangement.
2) In a society where pre-marital sex, out-of-wedlock birth, and divorce are considered normal and not stigmatized, you do start having a problem of women not able to find men to marry because the men simply don't see any point in getting married. Call the old story about the cow and the free milk sexist, but it's still true.
There is a good reason why polygamous societies are less stable and more violent than monogamous societies. Keeping young males out of trouble by allowing them to find a girlfriend or wife has long been recognized as good for society. Restricting men to marrying at most one wife makes it possible for more men to find a girlfriend or wife.
However we have far surpassed what is needed. A simple thing like a law against child labor, or a law against blocking unionization is one thing. But the laws long ago became too complex and in my opinion most do more harm than good. Most regulations should be pretty simple. The most complex regulations we have should be those for environmental protection because it can be difficult to recognize the many different forms pollution can take. But it seems nearly everything faces similarly complex rules.
A desert is bad. A stream is good. A flood is bad. We're under an ocean.
GS contributed to the economic collapse and benefited immensely from it. They are most definitely not stepping stones. Unfortunately they've corrupted their regulators so much that the US government will never set them straight.
That's what regulators are for, to be corrupted. A big company hated by the masses surrounded by more popular competition recognizes that it may yet fall victim to the free market. So they get the government to pass regulations designed to look like they make life more difficult for the big company but in fact those regulatiions make life even more difficult for their smaller competitors. Also, the regulations and regulations are powerful new tools that may be used by whoever controls them. It won't be the smaller competitors who control them, It won't be the public at large, who are far to busy with other matters to worry about the details of regulations and regulators in some industry. Instead it will be the wealthy in that industry who have the money and connections to control the new governmental tools.
Claranet customers can choose to set up and customise their own filters, or accept a pre-selected list from one of the Guardians and edit that themselves if they choose.
rather than Corporations that are able to do whatever the hell they want becuase no one has the power to stop them including the government,
And yet the Corporations gain most of their power through their control of the government. Weaken the Government and you weaken the big corporations rely on it for everything from direct subsidies to protection from foreign competitors to regulations that place a disproportionate burden on smaller domestic competitors to laws that keep us from exercising our rights of ownership of our electronic devices.
Agree. I don't whether the number of journalists who are scientists is more than or less than the the number of journalists who are conservatives, but in both cases the number is pretty small.
You parrot Fox News memes like a pro. Apologies for the misidentification. But if you quack like a duck, I'm going to peg you for a duck.
I can elaborate on some of your specific concerns then. You were concerned about the factual nature of climate change:
Of the seven links it provides, one of them is on Climate Change (not "facts" but "how much confidence do you that scientists to understand and predict a huge complicated system that they have almost no experience predicting?").
That's not all they asked. They asked about simple, verifiable, facts. "Is the Earth warmer today than it was 100 years ago?" is one such question. That doesn't rely on any sort of prediction, or any sort of interpretation of a model. The plain data is available for anyone who wants it. Fox News viewers still disagree with the fact that the Earth has warmed more than other news viewers.
although written in December 2010 before Obama released the birth certificate that finally shut Trump up, counted people's answer as "incorrect" if the people didn't believe Obama's was born in Hawaii
Trumps birtherism is exactly the kind of misinformation we're looking for. There was no more doubt in 2010 that Obama was born in Hawaii than there was that Bush was born in Connecticut. Trump and Fox manufactured the controversy for their own political ends. If you though that there was any doubt about Obama's birthplace in 2010, you were misled by propagandists. That's why it was marked inaccurate. Because it plainly was.
I wish I had the time to read the studies and go point by point but I just don't. I will ask, however, if you know of any studies that ask questions like, "True or False, the Bill of Rights guarantees 'separation of Church and State'" "The tax rates that caused the colonists to rebel against the British were A. Higher than today, B. Lower than today, or C. About the same" "True or False: George Zimmerman is Latino". "What is Fast and Furious?" "How many border partrol agents were killed with guns supplied as part of Fast and Furious?" "Who is William Ayers?" "Which presidents since 1990 involved the US in illegal wars (or you could reword it as: which US presidents since 1990 have committed US troops to offensive combat roles without first obtaining congressional approval as required by the US Constitution)?"
If you ask the right question, I'm sure you can get your study to show ignorance from whichever side you dislike.
Parent should be modded up. He's wrong of course, but he's not a troll.
Has any other news organization actually gone to court to fight for its right to lie to the public?
Had Fox simply fought the claim that they were lying, then they would have implicitly accepted the idea that the government gets to decide what is and is not "truth" and thereby would have ceded the government's right do censor anything it considers "untrue". Fox would have been derelict in its ethical duty as part of a free press had it failed to defend the right of a free press to lie.
Has any other news organization actually gone to court to fight for its right to lie to the public?
Most don't need to because their right to do so isn't challenged. And that's a good thing. They do have a right to lie. Without that right censorship becomes a simple matter of deciding what is allowed to be true.
That is some first class mental gymnastics there. It doesn't surprise me in the least that you're a Fox News viewer.
Where did you get that "fact" from? I'm not a Fox viewer. You've been badly misinformed.
I especially like the part where you use the misinformation Fox spreads
What's really amazing is that I did so without even being a Fox viewer.
about climage change to impugn the validity of a study about misinformation.
You are a perfect example of the kind of arrogantly misinformed individual Fox News viewing produces.
So I'm a perfect example of something I'm not.
The fact is I hardly watch any TV news but I listen to news almost daily - from NPR.
But hey, don't let the facts get in the way.
It reminds me of the Planet of the Apes trial seen. "See how stupid those Fox viewing Humans are! They don't even know the 7 reasons Apes are superior to Man!"
The home page of your link has as its second article "Climate Denial Hits Brazil" which tells me a lot about that website's independence. Of the seven links it provides, one of them is on Climate Change (not "facts" but "how much confidence do you that scientists to understand and predict a huge complicated system that they have almost no experience predicting?"). Two of the links were to MSNBC. Lacking time to investigate all of the remaining four, I chose the "worldpulicopinion" link and was taken to an article that, although written in December 2010 before Obama released the birth certificate that finally shut Trump up, counted people's answer as "incorrect" if the people didn't believe Obama's was born in Hawaii. Whether people were being overly suspicious in thinking that the documents that had so far been provided could be easily faked, the fact is that Obama's birthplace was not provable (even now one could argue that with the power of the White House behind him Obama could have easily faked his birth certificate). And I don't think it was a coincidence that the article chose mostly questions where the "correct" answer would make Obama look better. You can find these "10 myths about..." propaganda on many third-rate sites, magazines and newspapers. Dressing it up as a scholarly paper doesn't remove the bias.
Fox News verifiably lies more often than other US sources of news, and time spent watching Fox News is inversely correlated with accurate knowledge of verifiable facts.
Which news source told you that?
Even "verifiable facts" can be in the eye of the beholder. One famous poll result that biased reporters like to point to is that many Fox viewers believed Obama was a Muslim even though it was a verifiable fact that Obama says he is a Christian. Of course usually that part about "Obama says" is left out. Instead the superior-feeling reporters simply take Obama at his word. It never occurs to them that perhaps the Fox viewers are aware of Obama's claims, but that many Fox viewers simply don't believe Obama because of other facts they know about the man. Think about it, is it really possible that Fox viewers didn't know about the church Obama attended or about his paster Jeremiah Wright? But the reporters don't want to think, they simply want to attack a successful competitor that has different political views.
From what I've heard the NRA is very big into gun safety and teaching people how to properly use guns to avoid accidents.
The NRA has some positions that I find extreme. However I believe they are a reaction to a pretty strong attack on second amendment rights. The NRA seems to held the line in the sense that gun regulations aren't being expanded everywhere. But there was a time I can remember when outlawing firearms was embraced by a lot of politicians. There were efforts to persuade people that the second amendment didn't mean anything beyond having the National Guard armed. Many local governments outlawed guns altogether (and many still have those laws).
People are willing to tolerate reasonable restrictions on speech (can't yell fire in a crowded theatre, can't threaten to kill people, etc.) because in general the right to free speech are pretty secure. I think the NRA took pretty extreme positions as a defensive measure and were convincing enough that the positions have stuck.
Typical case of a headline deliberately leaving out critical information to make something sound bad. TFAs contain two very useful pieces of information.
1. The US citizen attempting to buy the export controlled product said "I'm from Iran". It is perfectly reasonable to assume someone who speaks Farsi and says their "from Iran" is in fact Iranian, especially when mistakenly assuming the other way could get you in a lot of legal trouble. The article makes no mention of the customer specially saying "I'm an American" or "I'm a US citizen". Even "I'm originally from Iran" would have been clarifying.
2.
Jafarzadeh said he was helping a friend buy an iPhone. That friend was from Iran, living and studying in the Atlanta area on a visa. "We never talked about him going back to Iran or anything like that. He was just speaking full-fledged Farsi and the representative came back and denied our sale," Jafarzadeh said.
It doesn't matter whether the friend was going back to Iran. Since the friend is Iranian (A US citizen wouldn't be "in the Atlanta area on a visa"), giving or selling the friend export-controlled technology would be a problem.
Since when does sensible regulation = totalitarianism? I'm not saying firearms should be regulated, but private companies? Fuck yes they should be regulated.
Sensible regulation doesn't equal totalitarianism anymore than small government = fuedalism. However, we do know from both history and human nature that power corrupts and tends to draw more power to itself and that experiments in having big government tend to end badly.
A sensible position is to always remember that government=force, remember that individual liberty had intrinsic value, and whenever someone suggests using the government to solve a problem question whether or not non-government people and government can solve it and whether a government solution is worse than the problem. Too often our first question is "how can government solve this?" rather than "why can't this be solved by people exercising their liberty?"
Parent and grandparent post make part of an important larger point. Wikipedia is like any other written thing - it's not perfect and when you read it you have to be aware of the strengths and limitations of the writers. The same is true of anything you read in newspapers, science journals, history text books. As part of the writing process people let biases and inaccuracies creep in. Sometimes it is deliberate POV pushing, sometimes not so deliberate. Sometimes it is just an unavoidable effect of having to pick and choose which information to include because space is limited so simply can't give fair hearing to all sides of a debate. Sometimes it is ignorance on the part of the writer that is compounded by the writer not even realizing that he is ignorant about an aspect of a subject.
It's important to think about the likely motivations of writers when reading Wikipedia. It is important to be aware that occasionally vandals insert wrong information. You can always check the sources, and check the recent changes to the article when you suspect the information is simply wrong. When you suspect bias it is good to check the discussion history too so you can get an idea of what biases the different editors are trying to deal with. ~~~~
Firstly, governments, wether they be state, federal, county, whatever, don't have "rights." They have powers. It's a big difference -- human beings have rights because of natural law, or social acceptance, or convention; they aren't contingent and cannot be revoked. Government power is always contingent, even if they put guns to everyone's heads -- which is actually an indicator of a very weak government, not a powerful one.
Therefore Corporations can be given far more rights than the government.
Well said, loyal consumer! For your grassroots advocacy, you have earned an extra allotment of scrip to spend at the company store!
Cool! an ad hominem and a strawman rolled into one!
I didn't say the government shouldn't do anything. In fact I specifically listed at least one thing the government should do - keep guns (and by implication use them when necessary). I agree with the need for anti-trust law. What I disagree with is the presumption articulated by liberals like George W Bush who famously said, "We have a responsibility that when somebody hurts, government has got to move." In fact before government moves we should spend some serious thought on whether the problem can be addressed without government involvement. Will enlightened self-interest lead to a solution? Can charities step in? What are the potential unintended consequences of government action? If government action turns out to be a mistake will it be corrected or will it, having the force of law and continue forever? Even if charities and business can't or won't address a problem, will the cure of putting a government gun to people's head to force them into involuntary servitude of fixing the problem - will that cure be worse than the problem we're hoping to fix?
Liberty has an intrinsic value that is difficult to measure in terms of money, health and security. We know our forefather's risked and many sacrificed their money, health and security for the sake of liberty. What value do we place on liberty today?
Firstly, governments, wether they be state, federal, county, whatever, don't have "rights." They have powers. It's a big difference -- human beings have rights because of natural law, or social acceptance, or convention; they aren't contingent and cannot be revoked. Government power is always contingent, even if they put guns to everyone's heads -- which is actually an indicator of a very weak government, not a powerful one.
Therefore Corporations can be given far more rights than the government.
Well said, loyal consumer! For your grassroots advocacy, you have earned an extra allotment of scrip to spend at the company store!
Cool! an ad hominem and a strawman rolled into one!
I didn't say the government shouldn't do anything. In fact I specifically listed at least one thing the government should do - keep guns (and by implication use them when necessary). I agree with the need for anti-trust law. What I disagree with is the presumption articulated by liberals like George W Bush who famously said, "We have a responsibility that when somebody hurts, government has got to move." In fact before government moves we should spend some serious thought on whether the problem can be addressed without government involvement. Will enlightened self-interest lead to a solution? Can charities step in? What are the potential unintended consequences of government action? If government action turns out to be a mistake will it be corrected or will it, having the force of law and continue forever? Even if charities and business can't or won't address a problem, will the cure of putting a government gun to people's head to force them into involuntary servitude of fixing the problem - will that cure be worse than the problem we're hoping to fix?
Liberty has an intrinsic value that is difficult to measure in terms of money, health and security. We know our forefather's risked and many sacrificed their money, health and security for the sake of liberty. What value do we place on liberty today?
Slashdot Mirror
The border is tighter than under Bush, but it still isn't an effective deterrent, nor is the increased security in any way permanent. I'll be satisfied when 99.9% of illegal aliens who reach the border look at it, realize the futility of trying to get across, and then turn around and go home to apply for the visa lottery.
A one time investment to build a barrier, money for maintenance, and money for troops. Expensive, yes, but cheaper than the costs of illegal immigration and the various forms of trafficking.
And in addition to the costs to Americans, let's not forget the Mexican lives that will be saved when the drug wars are greatly reduced and when illegal aliens stop dying in the desert as they try to cross.
And there's the benefit that with a secure permanent border in place we can finally have an amnesty so many people will be able to come out of the shadows.
You misunderstand. If the government is hiring the private company, then the government is still calling the shots and controlling the money, and it is still big government. When conservatives seek smaller government, they mean they want government controlling less of our personal lives, less of our money, and less of our public lives.
If they want to fight "sex, drug, organ, or baby traffickers" they should be pushing the government to make the border secure. The problem seems to be that if we secure the border against "sex, drug, organ, or baby traffickers" it will have a side-effect of severely limiting illegal immigration. That have a negative impact on profits for many of the 1% who would have to start paying reasonable wages and following worker protection laws, and it would be bad for Democratic electoral politics.
It is indeed hard to write laws. But one of the goals of writing them should be to make them concise. A short law with a little ambiguity is bad, but so is a law that is so verbose that it requires two lawyers to figure out what you're allowed to do. And even then you're not sure because every additional clause meant to clarify is also an additional opportunity for new ambiguity to creep in. Each pair of clauses is a new opportunity for inconsistency that leads to more ambiguity.
Whether you make the laws concise or verbose, ambiguity is a problem. But with concise laws at least there is some possibility of citizen oversight. An interested citizen can read a 5 page law. But on interested citizen can read the federal budget that gets passed each year. Even the legislators who vote on it don't read the whole thing.
I have long thought that the best reform we could make to the American government is to require one of the sponsors of a bill to read the entire thing from the podium before it is voted on - and only those legislators who sit through the whole reading would be permitted to vote. That would shorten bills tremendously and lead to greater accountability as no legislator could deny knowledge of an obscure clause in a bill they voted for (at least not without looking like they're neglecting their duty to pay attention during the reading). The sponsor in particular, having read the bill aloud, would be accountable for its contents.
Another nice touch would be to give sponsors of a bill veto power over any amendment added to the bill.
1) In such a society I suppose you might end up with married men having too much time on their hands. Anyway, such societies are extremely rare because men tend to die younger (through violence) and because men are less willing to put up with such an arrangement.
2) In a society where pre-marital sex, out-of-wedlock birth, and divorce are considered normal and not stigmatized, you do start having a problem of women not able to find men to marry because the men simply don't see any point in getting married. Call the old story about the cow and the free milk sexist, but it's still true.
There is a good reason why polygamous societies are less stable and more violent than monogamous societies. Keeping young males out of trouble by allowing them to find a girlfriend or wife has long been recognized as good for society. Restricting men to marrying at most one wife makes it possible for more men to find a girlfriend or wife.
Yes, there was need for some regulation.
However we have far surpassed what is needed. A simple thing like a law against child labor, or a law against blocking unionization is one thing. But the laws long ago became too complex and in my opinion most do more harm than good. Most regulations should be pretty simple. The most complex regulations we have should be those for environmental protection because it can be difficult to recognize the many different forms pollution can take. But it seems nearly everything faces similarly complex rules.
A desert is bad. A stream is good. A flood is bad. We're under an ocean.
GS contributed to the economic collapse and benefited immensely from it. They are most definitely not stepping stones. Unfortunately they've corrupted their regulators so much that the US government will never set them straight.
That's what regulators are for, to be corrupted. A big company hated by the masses surrounded by more popular competition recognizes that it may yet fall victim to the free market. So they get the government to pass regulations designed to look like they make life more difficult for the big company but in fact those regulatiions make life even more difficult for their smaller competitors. Also, the regulations and regulations are powerful new tools that may be used by whoever controls them. It won't be the smaller competitors who control them, It won't be the public at large, who are far to busy with other matters to worry about the details of regulations and regulators in some industry. Instead it will be the wealthy in that industry who have the money and connections to control the new governmental tools.
Claranet customers can choose to set up and customise their own filters, or accept a pre-selected list from one of the Guardians and edit that themselves if they choose.
- TFA
Nothing to see here. Please move on.
rather than Corporations that are able to do whatever the hell they want becuase no one has the power to stop them including the government,
And yet the Corporations gain most of their power through their control of the government. Weaken the Government and you weaken the big corporations rely on it for everything from direct subsidies to protection from foreign competitors to regulations that place a disproportionate burden on smaller domestic competitors to laws that keep us from exercising our rights of ownership of our electronic devices.
Agree. I don't whether the number of journalists who are scientists is more than or less than the the number of journalists who are conservatives, but in both cases the number is pretty small.
You parrot Fox News memes like a pro. Apologies for the misidentification. But if you quack like a duck, I'm going to peg you for a duck.
I can elaborate on some of your specific concerns then. You were concerned about the factual nature of climate change:
That's not all they asked. They asked about simple, verifiable, facts. "Is the Earth warmer today than it was 100 years ago?" is one such question. That doesn't rely on any sort of prediction, or any sort of interpretation of a model. The plain data is available for anyone who wants it. Fox News viewers still disagree with the fact that the Earth has warmed more than other news viewers.
Trumps birtherism is exactly the kind of misinformation we're looking for. There was no more doubt in 2010 that Obama was born in Hawaii than there was that Bush was born in Connecticut. Trump and Fox manufactured the controversy for their own political ends. If you though that there was any doubt about Obama's birthplace in 2010, you were misled by propagandists. That's why it was marked inaccurate. Because it plainly was.
I wish I had the time to read the studies and go point by point but I just don't. I will ask, however, if you know of any studies that ask questions like, "True or False, the Bill of Rights guarantees 'separation of Church and State'" "The tax rates that caused the colonists to rebel against the British were A. Higher than today, B. Lower than today, or C. About the same" "True or False: George Zimmerman is Latino". "What is Fast and Furious?" "How many border partrol agents were killed with guns supplied as part of Fast and Furious?" "Who is William Ayers?" "Which presidents since 1990 involved the US in illegal wars (or you could reword it as: which US presidents since 1990 have committed US troops to offensive combat roles without first obtaining congressional approval as required by the US Constitution)?"
If you ask the right question, I'm sure you can get your study to show ignorance from whichever side you dislike.
Has any other news organization actually gone to court to fight for its right to lie to the public?
Had Fox simply fought the claim that they were lying, then they would have implicitly accepted the idea that the government gets to decide what is and is not "truth" and thereby would have ceded the government's right do censor anything it considers "untrue". Fox would have been derelict in its ethical duty as part of a free press had it failed to defend the right of a free press to lie.
Has any other news organization actually gone to court to fight for its right to lie to the public?
Most don't need to because their right to do so isn't challenged. And that's a good thing. They do have a right to lie. Without that right censorship becomes a simple matter of deciding what is allowed to be true.
That is some first class mental gymnastics there. It doesn't surprise me in the least that you're a Fox News viewer.
Where did you get that "fact" from? I'm not a Fox viewer. You've been badly misinformed.
I especially like the part where you use the misinformation Fox spreads
What's really amazing is that I did so without even being a Fox viewer.
about climage change to impugn the validity of a study about misinformation.
You are a perfect example of the kind of arrogantly misinformed individual Fox News viewing produces.
So I'm a perfect example of something I'm not.
The fact is I hardly watch any TV news but I listen to news almost daily - from NPR.
But hey, don't let the facts get in the way.
It reminds me of the Planet of the Apes trial seen. "See how stupid those Fox viewing Humans are! They don't even know the 7 reasons Apes are superior to Man!"
The home page of your link has as its second article "Climate Denial Hits Brazil" which tells me a lot about that website's independence. Of the seven links it provides, one of them is on Climate Change (not "facts" but "how much confidence do you that scientists to understand and predict a huge complicated system that they have almost no experience predicting?"). Two of the links were to MSNBC. Lacking time to investigate all of the remaining four, I chose the "worldpulicopinion" link and was taken to an article that, although written in December 2010 before Obama released the birth certificate that finally shut Trump up, counted people's answer as "incorrect" if the people didn't believe Obama's was born in Hawaii. Whether people were being overly suspicious in thinking that the documents that had so far been provided could be easily faked, the fact is that Obama's birthplace was not provable (even now one could argue that with the power of the White House behind him Obama could have easily faked his birth certificate). And I don't think it was a coincidence that the article chose mostly questions where the "correct" answer would make Obama look better. You can find these "10 myths about ..." propaganda on many third-rate sites, magazines and newspapers. Dressing it up as a scholarly paper doesn't remove the bias.
It's not "Fox News Lies!"
Fox News verifiably lies more often than other US sources of news, and time spent watching Fox News is inversely correlated with accurate knowledge of verifiable facts.
Which news source told you that?
Even "verifiable facts" can be in the eye of the beholder. One famous poll result that biased reporters like to point to is that many Fox viewers believed Obama was a Muslim even though it was a verifiable fact that Obama says he is a Christian. Of course usually that part about "Obama says" is left out. Instead the superior-feeling reporters simply take Obama at his word. It never occurs to them that perhaps the Fox viewers are aware of Obama's claims, but that many Fox viewers simply don't believe Obama because of other facts they know about the man. Think about it, is it really possible that Fox viewers didn't know about the church Obama attended or about his paster Jeremiah Wright? But the reporters don't want to think, they simply want to attack a successful competitor that has different political views.
From what I've heard the NRA is very big into gun safety and teaching people how to properly use guns to avoid accidents.
The NRA has some positions that I find extreme. However I believe they are a reaction to a pretty strong attack on second amendment rights. The NRA seems to held the line in the sense that gun regulations aren't being expanded everywhere. But there was a time I can remember when outlawing firearms was embraced by a lot of politicians. There were efforts to persuade people that the second amendment didn't mean anything beyond having the National Guard armed. Many local governments outlawed guns altogether (and many still have those laws).
People are willing to tolerate reasonable restrictions on speech (can't yell fire in a crowded theatre, can't threaten to kill people, etc.) because in general the right to free speech are pretty secure. I think the NRA took pretty extreme positions as a defensive measure and were convincing enough that the positions have stuck.
1. The US citizen attempting to buy the export controlled product said "I'm from Iran". It is perfectly reasonable to assume someone who speaks Farsi and says their "from Iran" is in fact Iranian, especially when mistakenly assuming the other way could get you in a lot of legal trouble. The article makes no mention of the customer specially saying "I'm an American" or "I'm a US citizen". Even "I'm originally from Iran" would have been clarifying.
2.
Jafarzadeh said he was helping a friend buy an iPhone. That friend was from Iran, living and studying in the Atlanta area on a visa.
"We never talked about him going back to Iran or anything like that. He was just speaking full-fledged Farsi and the representative came back and denied our sale," Jafarzadeh said.
It doesn't matter whether the friend was going back to Iran. Since the friend is Iranian (A US citizen wouldn't be "in the Atlanta area on a visa"), giving or selling the friend export-controlled technology would be a problem.
Since when does sensible regulation = totalitarianism? I'm not saying firearms should be regulated, but private companies? Fuck yes they should be regulated.
Sensible regulation doesn't equal totalitarianism anymore than small government = fuedalism. However, we do know from both history and human nature that power corrupts and tends to draw more power to itself and that experiments in having big government tend to end badly.
A sensible position is to always remember that government=force, remember that individual liberty had intrinsic value, and whenever someone suggests using the government to solve a problem question whether or not non-government people and government can solve it and whether a government solution is worse than the problem. Too often our first question is "how can government solve this?" rather than "why can't this be solved by people exercising their liberty?"
Parent and grandparent post make part of an important larger point. Wikipedia is like any other written thing - it's not perfect and when you read it you have to be aware of the strengths and limitations of the writers. The same is true of anything you read in newspapers, science journals, history text books. As part of the writing process people let biases and inaccuracies creep in. Sometimes it is deliberate POV pushing, sometimes not so deliberate. Sometimes it is just an unavoidable effect of having to pick and choose which information to include because space is limited so simply can't give fair hearing to all sides of a debate. Sometimes it is ignorance on the part of the writer that is compounded by the writer not even realizing that he is ignorant about an aspect of a subject.
It's important to think about the likely motivations of writers when reading Wikipedia. It is important to be aware that occasionally vandals insert wrong information. You can always check the sources, and check the recent changes to the article when you suspect the information is simply wrong. When you suspect bias it is good to check the discussion history too so you can get an idea of what biases the different editors are trying to deal with. ~~~~
Great post!
Firstly, governments, wether they be state, federal, county, whatever, don't have "rights." They have powers. It's a big difference -- human beings have rights because of natural law, or social acceptance, or convention; they aren't contingent and cannot be revoked. Government power is always contingent, even if they put guns to everyone's heads -- which is actually an indicator of a very weak government, not a powerful one.
Therefore Corporations can be given far more rights than the government.
Well said, loyal consumer! For your grassroots advocacy, you have earned an extra allotment of scrip to spend at the company store!
Cool! an ad hominem and a strawman rolled into one!
I didn't say the government shouldn't do anything. In fact I specifically listed at least one thing the government should do - keep guns (and by implication use them when necessary). I agree with the need for anti-trust law. What I disagree with is the presumption articulated by liberals like George W Bush who famously said, "We have a responsibility that when somebody hurts, government has got to move." In fact before government moves we should spend some serious thought on whether the problem can be addressed without government involvement. Will enlightened self-interest lead to a solution? Can charities step in? What are the potential unintended consequences of government action? If government action turns out to be a mistake will it be corrected or will it, having the force of law and continue forever? Even if charities and business can't or won't address a problem, will the cure of putting a government gun to people's head to force them into involuntary servitude of fixing the problem - will that cure be worse than the problem we're hoping to fix?
Liberty has an intrinsic value that is difficult to measure in terms of money, health and security. We know our forefather's risked and many sacrificed their money, health and security for the sake of liberty. What value do we place on liberty today?
Firstly, governments, wether they be state, federal, county, whatever, don't have "rights." They have powers. It's a big difference -- human beings have rights because of natural law, or social acceptance, or convention; they aren't contingent and cannot be revoked. Government power is always contingent, even if they put guns to everyone's heads -- which is actually an indicator of a very weak government, not a powerful one.
Well said, loyal consumer! For your grassroots advocacy, you have earned an extra allotment of scrip to spend at the company store!
Cool! an ad hominem and a strawman rolled into one!
I didn't say the government shouldn't do anything. In fact I specifically listed at least one thing the government should do - keep guns (and by implication use them when necessary). I agree with the need for anti-trust law. What I disagree with is the presumption articulated by liberals like George W Bush who famously said, "We have a responsibility that when somebody hurts, government has got to move." In fact before government moves we should spend some serious thought on whether the problem can be addressed without government involvement. Will enlightened self-interest lead to a solution? Can charities step in? What are the potential unintended consequences of government action? If government action turns out to be a mistake will it be corrected or will it, having the force of law and continue forever? Even if charities and business can't or won't address a problem, will the cure of putting a government gun to people's head to force them into involuntary servitude of fixing the problem - will that cure be worse than the problem we're hoping to fix?
Liberty has an intrinsic value that is difficult to measure in terms of money, health and security. We know our forefather's risked and many sacrificed their money, health and security for the sake of liberty. What value do we place on liberty today?